metaphone

An algorithm for encoding a word so that
similar sounding words encode the same. It's similar to
soundex in purpose, but as it knows the basic rules of
English pronunciation it's more accurate. The higher accuracy
doesn't come free, though, metaphone requires more
computational power as well as more storage capacity, but
neither of these requirements are usually prohibitive. It is
in the public domain so it can be freely implemented.

Metaphone was developed by Lawrence Philips
<[email protected]>. It is described in ["Practical
Algorithms for Programmers", Binstock & Rex, Addison Wesley,
1995].